“You are mad to talk so,” she said again, but her voice was softer.

“No madder—­than—­my ancestors made me,” Lot stammered, feebly.  Great drops of sweat stood on his forehead.

Madelon stood looking at him.  He lay still, breathing hard, for a little; then he spoke again.  “Say you will marry me, and I will clear him,” he said, “or else—­strike as you will.  But all will believe that Burr struck the first blow and you the second for love of him, and though he be not hung, the mark of the noose will be round his neck in folks’ fancies so long as he draws the breath of life.”

“I will marry you,” said Madelon.

“Don’t cheat yourself,” Lot went on, in his disjointed sentences, broken with the rise of the cough in his throat.  “This wound may not be—­mortal—­after all, and a man lives—­long, sometimes, when he’s sore put to it for breath.  The spark of life dies hard, and you may fan it into a blaze again.  All the doctor’s nostrums may not stir my poor dying flesh—­but give the spirit—­what it craves—­and ’tis sometimes—­strong enough—­to gallop the flesh where it will.  Lord, I’ve seen a tree blossom in the fall, when ’twas warm enough.  It may be a long life we’ll—­live together, Madelon.  Don’t—­cheat—­yourself into—­thinking you’ll be my widow, instead of—­my wife.  My wife you may be, and—­the mother of my children.”

Madelon moved towards him with a curious, pushing motion, as if she thrust out of her way her own will.  She bent over him her white face, holding her body aloof.  “I will marry you, come what will.  Now, set him free.”

Great tears stood in Lot’s eyes.  “Oh,” he whispered, “you think only of him.  I love you better than he does, Madelon.”

“Set him free,” said she, in a hard voice.

Lot heaved a great sigh, and rolled his eyes feebly about towards the door.

“Find—­Margaret Bean,” he began; and with that Margaret Bean, who had kept the door ajar, slid out softly, “and tell her—­to send her husband to—­Parson Fair, and—­Jonas Hapgood, and she—­must go the other way for—­the doctor.  Tell them to come at once.”

With that Lot fell to coughing again, but Madelon went out quickly, and found Margaret Bean in the kitchen mixing gruel.

“Mr. Gordon wishes your husband to go at once for Parson Fair and Jonas Hapgood, and you for the doctor,” said she.

“Is he took worse?” asked Margaret Bean, innocently, with a quick sniff of apprehension.

“No, he is no worse, but he wishes to see them.  He said to go at once.”

Margaret Bean cast an injured eye at the window, all blurred with the clinging shreds of the storm.  “I don’t see how I can get out in this awful storm nohow,” she said.  “I’ve got rheumatism now.  Why can’t he go to see ’em all, I’d like to know?”

“The doctor lives a quarter of a mile the other way.  It will save time.”

Margaret Bean looked at the gruel.  “I’ve got to make this gruel for him.”